Cold Desert Skin

Brandon watched Felix stack the stones in a row of small, uneven piles, and wondered if what upset him had any merit. He remembered Felix having once told him that he hoped he would share all of his concerns with him, no matter how valid or stupid he thought they were. Brandon had already decided that what troubled him at that moment was indeed “stupid,” but he was troubled anyway, and he knew that Felix would have wanted to know it.

“They’re called cairns,” said Felix, referring to the stone piles. “It’s so we can find our way back.”

The Sonoran Desert was humid and wet, it being the end of Arizona’s monsoon season, and the signs warning of mountain lions and rattlesnakes were ubiquitous. The two men walked along the switchback trail, zigzagging diagonally up the bronze and unexpectedly verdant mountain. Sabino Canyon boasted a diverse array of cacti, among them the Staghorn, Engelman’s prickly pear, the Saguaro, the brown, spindly Ocotillo, the teddy-bear cholla cactus, and the jumping cholla cactus. Felix had cautioned Brandon against getting too close to the jumping cholla as its spines were known to “jump” into whatever— or whomever—approached it; hence the none-too-subtle name.

Felix spent most of the hike thinking not about the dry heat and lizards of his youth in the Southwest but rather about the adult life he and Brandon left behind in New York, if only for a week. Their vacation was full enough with activities and adventures, but home’s daily chores and routine social engagements seemed to attach themselves to him, reminding of their inevitable return.

Weekend and evening functions hosted by philandering politicians and condemnatory aesthetes filled their calendar. Brandon and Felix found themselves perpetually stuck in cavernous, palatial penthouses on Park Avenue, surrounded by closeted actors and bankers, mercenary accountants and lawyers. The couple would escape the small talk by stealing away to unoccupied hideouts, admiring billowy satin curtains that bore a resemblance to sheets of liquid metal. They grew weary of discussing their jobs, trying to make them seem more interesting than they knew they were. Brandon was tired of working in boutique education, editing college admissions essays for international students, mainly from China; working from home was tedious and lonely. Felix was bored with new media—managing intangible content was a depressing affair.

Both gigs were glamorous in their convenience, though sorely lacked any sense of importance. Their pre-war Hamilton Heights apartment was lousy with empty bottles of Prosecco, Stella Artois, and Maker’s Mark. Only consumption could remedy the deleterious effects of the daily grind and a pressure to be self-important.

“Look!” shouted Brandon, dropping to a knee and crouching over something that Felix couldn’t quite make out until he got closer and saw that what stirred his boyfriend was a small desert tortoise, something Felix had seen a thousand times before while growing up in Southern Tucson.

“Cute,” said Felix, kneeling beside Brandon, admiring the languid creature’s mottled shell, the octagonal configurations on which seemed almost caringly painted.

“He might get stepped on,” said Brandon, delicately pinching the tortoise by its thick shell and lifting it up slowly. Felix watched him walk off the trail and partially down the mountain into the brush, where he set the tortoise with gentle ease.

“Don’t get hurt,” said Felix. “I’ll be pissed at that little guy if you get hurt trying to help him.”

Brandon snickered as he used his hands to claw his way back up to the trail, gravel and pebbles and desiccated, pulpy plants causing him to slip and scrape his palms and knees along the way. Felix resisted the urge to say, “I told you so.”

The two men moved quickly and quietly, careful not to attract too much attention from prowling cougars, infamous for their stealthy and precise predation. The men’s matching olive big brimmed boonie hats would protect them from the pitiless sun, but their red and yellow t-shirts—saturated with sweat and encrusted with dirt and sand and khaki shorts—equally shopworn and damp—would do little to make the lovers less obvious bait, delectable targets.

Studying Felix’s quarter profile from behind and slightly to the right, Brandon thought about the older man he had seen in the hotel dining room during breakfast. With his hulking frame and shaved head, the man looked like a career Marine or aging athlete, perhaps fifteen years Brandon’s senior, possibly closing in on fifty. He was striking, regal; the cheekbones seemed capable of supporting a set of teacups. Brandon had ignored the fact that he was dining with a pretty blonde woman, most likely his wife, as a wedding band was also spotted on his ring finger. Brandon scrutinized the partial view of Felix’s face—a large Romanesque nose, a wide Mayan mouth, an imposing prominent brow. The loveliest combination of dense shock of jet-black hair, pale taupe skin tone, and square jaw. Superficial though the bond began, Brandon still preferred his boyfriend to anyone else. Even the straight wedded alpha male. Felix’s dark liquid irises gleamed like a doe’s and offered solace.

“Maybe I can get the school to let me work remotely,” said Brandon, combing with soil-caked fingers damp tufts of flaxen hair from his brow.

“That would be great. I think if I work overtime this year, I’ll be able to save enough by next fall.”

“It would be fun, right? A year in Italy.”

“Yeah,” said Felix, thinking about how far away a year sounded and how long a year together with Brandon in a distant country seemed.

“Well, I guess it’s something to start thinking about.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

The midday sunshine that had flattened the colors of the desert vanished. Storm clouds moved in. A gray pallor covered the sky. Brandon watched the purple clouds mix with horizontal blades of white and orange on the horizon and wondered how he would tell Felix that his crack during breakfast about him being “a barbarian” for eating shellfish was bruising. He thought that such sensitivity was foolish, callow even. And he thought that Felix would, too. Brandon was too fragile, but his feelings were real, and they blanketed his mood. He knew that Felix absorbed his moods, was set off by them, becoming grumpy or distant as a result. Brandon blamed himself for all of it.

The passes were narrow and overlooked a two-hundred-foot steep pitch. Slender slabs of metamorphic granite jutted up and out of the mountain like a giant’s fingers or tongues. Horned toads, western banded geckos, and Gila monsters scampered and slithered for food; they clawed at and slobbered on their dead meat. An unkindness of common ravens circled the summit. The men were close.

“Am I doing something wrong?” asked Felix, frowning, his voice flat and cracking. “Am I upsetting you?”

“No,” said Brandon, urgently, incredulously.

Brandon thought about the afternoon they flew to Arizona. He had been waiting for Felix on the A train subway platform during rush hour for nearly forty minutes. They were supposed to meet and head to JFK together to catch their flight. Brandon remembered watching people hurrying down the steel-capped subway stairs. The filth and blackened gum-smears felt somehow grounding. The mother of a trio of young boys screamed in Spanish about not standing too close to the edge of the platform. Two homeless men argued over turf. An old Asian couple held hands and shook when the train rumbled into the station. Hundreds of other New Yorkers had been milling about, bumping into his luggage, cursing, spitting, farting—as was the custom, but he found none of them as memorable as those few he studied. Fragile desperation always caught his attention.

Though Brandon didn’t say the actual words, Felix was pretty sure that he knew what bothered him. Brandon was becoming an expert at keeping what ate at him a secret. It was the thing that saddened Felix most-not being permitted entry into the man he loved, into the heart of his boyfriend of two years. It disturbed him to think that such things could still be kept secret, to be held so far at arm’s length by someone with whom he believed he had grown so close, so familiar. The body beside him in bed sometimes felt like a stranger’s, nothing more than a booty call. It was an emotional horror story, one that played out whenever big promises were made, or romantic admissions were dropped. I love you, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a partner, and I’m not sure I want to spend even another night with you. Such thoughts were possible. Caprice. The probability of abandonment always loomed.

“Oh God,” whispered Felix, hurrying up the path to where a common raven writhed and cawed, twitching its head to the left, creating a circle in the sand with its spinning, twisted-winged body. Frayed feathers lay strewn about. Brandon cringed. He saw the blood and pus seeping from the base of the three long cholla spines imbedded in the bird’s face.

“Wow,” panted Brandon, prompting Felix to look up. Hundreds of common ravens stood in a mass of blackness along the mountaintop, watching and seemingly waiting.

Felix looked back at the impaled bird, examining its wounds more closely. One spine cracked its beak. Another nearly pierced its left eye. He tugged lightly on the spine near the beak, causing the bird to caw and shudder. He grabbed the raven by the neck, keeping its head inert, and slowly though forcefully yanked the cholla spines from its face. The raven kicked its feet and cawed.

“Douse him,” said Felix.

Brandon opened his canteen and poured what remained of the water onto the raven’s face, ridding it of dirt, pus, and blood, though more quickly came to surface.

Felix placed the raven on its feet. It wobbled, shook its head, wiped its beak with its right wing, and cawed. Its brethren continued to wait, observantly. The raven flapped its wings, kicking up sand, and with a snap lifted off the ground and flew away. The other ravens immediately rose and followed after it. In the distance Felix and Brandon could see the unkindness catch up with the slow-moving bird.

Brandon had been moved by Felix’s family; they had welcomed him, made him feel like part of the pack, cooked him home-style burritos and guacamole, creamy with plenty of shaved jalapenos, cilantro, and chopped basil leaves. It had been the first time Brandon met them, and the awkwardness and tension that he had imagined turned out to be just that: imaginary. Their down-to-Earth manner and accepting nature engendered in Brandon an even greater love for Felix. Brandon felt flashes of unexpected lust for his boyfriend, the gentle, giving man he had taken for granted for too long. Moving in together and getting married would provide scant satisfaction for the surprising desire Brandon had felt for Felix in those moments, watching him interact with his nieces and nephews, his sisters and brothers, his parents. It was the thing about being in a same-sex union that Brandon most begrudged: not being able to have his partner’s baby. Every other gesture or expression of adoration felt insufficient.

“We could build an Earthship here,” said Brandon, perking up like a child. “Right in the middle of the desert. Completely off the grid.”

“Construct our own septic tank, set up solar panels, milk cows, raise chickens for eggs, grow our own fruits and vegetables,” said Felix, melding sarcasm with wistfulness.

“Become desert farmers.”

“Yeah,” said Brandon, unsure. “Organic living.”

Manhattan haunted. The daily grind on the 1 train wore them down—crowded and sweaty and jarring with anxiety and stress written across commuters’ faces on the morning trip to the office and grief and defeat humming off the somnolent transients during the return ride home. The effort to feel comfortable—even sane—was great in a place like New York. Brandon wondered if things would be better in Arizona or Italy. Would leaving New York make any real difference in perspective? Would he feel differently about himself? He would still be stuck with the same unreliable body, the same traitorous brain. The cactus was as mercurial as the Bougainvillea vine. Both flowered but neither could provide a guarantee.

A coyote’s call bellowed in the distance. The voices of other tourists prattling on about “foreign” films and local agriculture trilled nearby. Brandon followed Felix down the mountain, keeping tabs on the cairns they had stacked on the way up. Neither man spoke. They shared a bittersweet energy that seemed to bounce back and forth between them, some sense of tenderness mixing with apathy. It felt tenuous, their bond. Something had been harmed, though what it was remained unclear. Brandon felt a pang of panic when Felix pulled away and crossed his arms, not touching him, which always scared Brandon to the point of breathlessness.

Felix’s feelings seemed visible to Brandon. They took color and radiated. He could see his boyfriend’s resentment. That Felix would harbor any resentment for him without talking about it with him hurt. Brandon would rather be dumped than resented. He knew that Felix was not being a hypocrite, that he was not doing what he had always asked Brandon not to do—withhold concerns. Brandon knew that Felix was quietly working out what was bothering him, hoping to resolve and dismiss it before discussing it. It was something that Brandon himself had become a master of—digestion. Indigestion would more commonly occur.

Tough and interminable though it was, Brandon could not help but to watch Felix’s processing of the elliptical take place, knowing that he himself was the cause of the preoccupations and disconnection.

Brandon touched Felix’s back, and Felix stopped, hung his head. Brandon’s steel blue eyes implored feedback, something. Anything. That Felix stopped walking was almost enough. Brandon kissed the back of his neck, tasting the sun block intermingled with briny sweat. Brandon’s heart raced. He thought for a moment that the combination of heat stroke and angst would cause him to faint. He hoped it would.

“I love you, baby,” whispered Brandon, kissing Felix’s neck again.

“I love you, too,” said Felix in a tone so emotionless it paused Brandon.

Brandon’s knees buckled and he let go of Felix. He knelt down before a tangerine dragonfly, which hovered over the body of a dead jackrabbit, studying it, alighting on it, tasting it. Brandon hoped for a black widow or scorpion to investigate the carcass, too. The dragonfly was useless at such times.

Felix turned to Brandon, watching him inspect the dead jackrabbit, and realized that such moments of uncertainty unnerved him, but he allowed them to take however long they needed to take. Felix wondered if he had ever loved. If he could  love? Was his blood as cold as those of the reptiles that surrounded him? Did he ever know actual love, or was it just obligation that he’d always felt? Maybe he had never given love, only service.

Looking away from his boyfriend, Felix knew that he had become the thing that scared him so that he would not be afraid anymore. A horrible thought occurred to him, and he hated it instantly: sometimes you want to hurt someone just because you can. To show him that he can get hurt.

The hope was coated in bitterness. Think for yourself, put things in a better order.

Felix glanced at Brandon who no longer examined the corpse of the once-spry hare, but instead stared softly, nearly pathetically, back at him with beseeching eyes. It was impossible for Brandon to be around Felix for extended periods of time without gazing at him or touching him; even when sleeping he needed to maintain contact with some part of him, no matter how minimal: Brandon’s toes would touch Felix’s toes, Brandon’s hand would press against Felix’s hip, their backs would rest against one another’s. Brandon would only have bad dreams during the nights when they were out of unity. It seemed as though the physical contact itself is what kept his mind from going into dark corners.

By allowing himself to imagine the worst possible outcomes, Brandon was getting better at accepting the possibility of doom, of failure. He had to ruminate on the things that upset him because it was the only way he’d be able to live with them. It had been some time since he had thoroughly pored over the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder literature: fantasize about the worst thing that could happen to you and then embrace it, wrap yourself up in it, smother yourself with it like a warm, suffocating blanket.

The stars would be clear at night. Clearer than they were in New York, what with the smog and smoke and skyscrapers and soot obscuring the sky. Felix wanted to wait for the sun to set before leaving the canyon. So did Brandon. They had discussed it over breakfast in their hotel dining room, eating poached eggs with goat cheese and Greek yogurt with raspberries and granola. Up until the dig about the barbarism of shellfish eaters, Brandon had thought that the morning had been nice. He felt buried by the comment, the joke. It was only a joke. He took it too seriously. He knew Felix meant nothing by it, but still it irritated and tugged at him.

They had attended the opening of Polo in Southampton annually. They wore matching Balenciaga suits to the opera. They dined at Le Cirque and Le Bernadin with academics and novelists. Brandon and Felix wormed their way into the best New York had to offer. Felix sometimes thought that their public outings and the company they shared were the adhesives that kept them soldered together. He felt more and more in the last few weeks that their relationship was almost one of show, something performable. The idea spooked him.

Plastic surgery monsters polluted their world back home, prehistoric insects and outsized serpents cluttered their universe on holiday. Gay bashers struck in packs with broken beer bottles and pistols even in Chelsea and the West Village. Pretty young models seduced at soirees in Brooklyn. Pumas pounced in the mountains. They wanted to believe that their bond was strong enough to endure all of the strains put on their commitment to one another; they were confident that they would withstand the world’s wiggling into their middle, that few societal wedges would split them apart. They idealized love as an indomitable force, one that neither homophobes, nor attractive tempters, nor wild animals would ever defeat.

The men stood over the shed skin of a rattlesnake. Its withering, crustacean-like hull was turgid and malformed. It was also longer and thicker than they would have expected. The microcosmic melodrama of the desert was not lost on them. Nothing happened on the small scale that wouldn’t happen in their world. Venom found itself flush in myriad permutations. The treachery was generous.

Behavior sometimes belied intention. Felix kicked over his cairns, gathered the stones, and thought again about how easily people broke promises or made promises they never intended to keep. He hurled the three stones he held into the brush, tearing the heather to ribbons. Lizards darted in a frenzy from the attack. Brandon held his breath, sighed. Felix turned to him and grabbed him, held him, burying his face in his chest. Brandon could feel him opening his mouth, breathing hot breath against him, furling his brow, and there was wetness. Drool? Snot? Tears? Brandon could not be sure. It didn’t matter anymore. Brandon held him back.

Image-consciousness was a cosmopolitan burden. New York required of them a self- awareness that the desert did not. Brandon thought about the character he would have to reconstitute upon his return home. He also thought that two years was a long time to be in a relationship. His bleak imagination wanted to find tedium with reality, knowing the whole person lacked the romance of the fantasy upheld during courtship. Exposure to each other’s down spells, messy habits, rigid particularities, embarrassing foibles, and unsavory smells and sights killed the fairytale about love saving the day. Living as a couple was as charming as the asbestos paint chips peeling away from the water-damaged subway ceiling under which he waited for Felix.

The worst nights were those during which they contended for the attention from wasp-waisted, leering strangers in queer quarters, inventorying the stares. Brandon accepted the truth of the secret to a sustainable relationship: one must remain in good humor with one’s self in order to continue loving one’s partner, obviating the tendency to envy or compete or resent. Keep the arms big, the torso toned, the face youthful, and the talents and intelligence vital. These are the imperatives. I test the limits of your love for me by hurting you repeatedly.

The desert was suffused again with hot light. The spindly Ocotillo cactus turned from brown to green after a rainfall because everything in the desert ardently pursued sustenance whenever it could, whenever the opportunity for increase presented itself. Brandon began to worry that he would inevitably ruin his love affair with Felix. His immaturity would succeed in upending the agreement, his mental unrest would eventually wear his partner’s resistance down to a nub. Silent judgments felt like a betrayal of trust.

The anti-topic of negotiation flitted in the air like a butterfly practicing its aerial acrobatics; the negotiables were not truly negotiable. Felix let go. He turned and reached back. He touched and then seized Brandon’s fingers. Brandon returned the squeeze. They walked on.

 

 

Brian Alessandro has had short fiction, essays, reviews, and interviews published in Interview Magazine, Newsday, PANK, Huffington Post, Bloom, Lambda Literary, and Crashing Cathedrals, and launched The New Engagement, a literature and art journal. His graphic novel adaptation of Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story will be published in 2021 by National Book Award-winner Top Shelf Productions. Brian wrote the novel The Unmentionable Mann, directed the feature film Afghan Hound and will be co-starring in the film A Saintly Madness. He holds a Master of Arts in clinical psychology from Columbia University and works in the mental health field.